i spent three days in budapest, mostly to hang out with a great friend and former college roommate named brad. i feel like we have so many memories from college, everything from weekly wings nights to road trips to maine to wonderful liturgical church services to apples to apples at “family” game nights to lamenting the methods used by certain women to break up with us to wine tasting in the santa ynez valley to an infamous box of stool that just wouldn’t disappear to fish tacos in tijuana to vague recollections of him leaving at 2 am in the mornings for his job sorting lobsta in glosta, just to name a few. it was great to catch up. he is pursuing a master’s degree at a very interesting graduate-only institution called central european university that is entirely in english and is a remarkable melting pot of students from every corner of the world. after a couple days i had already hung out with people from over one dozen different countries, including a disproportionately large number of romanians. we went to all kinds of little hungarian restaurants that the tourists don’t know about and it was amazing. and inexpensive. oh and also he was kind enough to show me to a few different shopping malls – they have some seriously amazing malls in budapest! one day we went to a traditional hungarian bath house! i stayed immersed in it’s waters the entire day. it was a good time! speaking of budapest – hey dad! – remember that time we were there on christmas eve a few years ago?! that was also a good time.